Lead Guitar 101

Let's imagine that we had a guitar with an infinite number of strings, all tuned in fourths; if you started with Pattern #7 and kept on going, you would end up with the pattern shown above. Observe how all 7 of the Speed Scale Patterns fall somewhere into this Extended Cycle if you make an additional shift up of one fret on the "B" string; this repeating pattern can be remembered with this mneumonic phrase:

"Two up, two down, three, three, three, shift"

Pedal-Point is basically the same technique as Digital-Picking (or sequencing) with a little twist: you keep returning to some base tone called the "Pedal Tone," for instance:

32, 31, 37, 36, 35, 34, 33 (always returning to 3)

21, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22 (always returning to 2)

Finger-Tapping is a technique where you play scales or arpeggios with your left hand and hammer-on (ie, "tap") one or more additional notes with your right hand (I use my index finger). I particularly like to use notes that are all right next to each other in a row for the right-hand notes as this is easier to do and less prone to mistakes than trying to find notes that are scattered all around.

An Arpeggio is just playing the notes of a chord one note at a time rather than all at once. This can be combined with the Digital-Picking techniques to create some interesting patterns. Arpeggios can also be done using two-handed techniques where one or more notes of the chord are tapped-on using the right hand as exemplified by guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

Like Digital Picking, Arpeggios relate back numerically to the Church Modes Number Pattern in a specific way. The simplest Arpeggios are the three-note chord (Cord Triad) Arpeggios. To do these, you play 3 notes but skip every other note; so starting with tone number 1 you play: 1,3,5; at tone number 2 you play: 2,4,6; at tone number 3 you play 3,5,7; etc. In all of these, you would normally play more than one octave, so for tone number 1 you would play:

1(first octave), 3, 5 - 1(second octave), 3, 5 - 1(third octave), 3, 5 - etc.

Any note of any Church Mode Scale can be the starting point of an Arpeggio. The type of Arpeggio depends upon what tone number (ie, scale degree) you are starting with as follows:

1=Major, 2=minor, 3=minor, 4=Major, 5=Major, 6-minor, 7=diminished

The Augmented Arpeggio does not occur in the Church Mode patterns, but it does occur at the 3rd scale degree of the Harmonic Minor Scale discussed further down. In the Arpeggio diagrams above, the colored dots are the starting points and the octave notes of the Arpeggio.

The pentatonic Scale only has 5 tones instead of 7.

In the above Pentatonic Scale Number Pattern graphic, the 1's are the Root notes.

If all the 1's are "E" notes, then you are playing an E-Pentatonic scale
If all the 1's are "A" notes, then you are playing an A-Pentatonic scale
If all the 1's are "G" notes, then you are playing a G-Pentatonic scale
etc.

The Pentatonic number pattern translates into 5 "Box Patterns" which stack on top of one another. Note how the Pentatonic patterns in the above graphic overlap - the bottom notes of one pattern are the top notes of the next pattern.

The 5 Pentatonic Patterns are actually derived from the Church Mode Patterns by leaving out all the Church Mode 4 and 7 notes as shown above. What this means is that you can go from playing Pentatonic scales to playing Church Mode scales simply by including the "extra" notes or you can go from playing Church Mode scales to Pentatonic scales by excluding the "extra" notes.

What you do is hold down one note of a scale with your left hand and repeatedly tap (ie, "trill") the next higher note of the scale on the same string with your right hand index finger; then move to other scale degree positions and trill each pair of vertically adjacent notes. Trills can also be done using the side of your pick or entirely one-handed as exemplified by Tony Iommi of Black Sabboth who pioneered the Trill technique. In the above graphic you Trill each pair of red and green notes that are on the same string.

Banned in ancient times for sounding too "devilish," the Diminished scale is a must-know for any modern aspiring guitarist. You will hear it being used extensively in metal bands such as Metallica, Pantera, and Anthrax.

Notice that the Diminished Scale is a perfectly symmetrical scale where the distance between sequential notes is always the same distance throughout the scale.

You will find that the Pentatonic Scale and the Diminished Scale can be fit together by playing a Pentatonic scale and then using the in-between "Chromatic" notes as the starting point for a Diminished Scale pattern.

Pictures of some Thrash Metal guitarists.

The Augmented Scale shown above is also called the Whole-Tone Scale. Like the Diminished Scale, it is a perfectly symmetrical scale - every interval between two sequential notes is the same distance, a whole tone.

The Blues sound is created by playing a Pentatonic scale and then sprinkling in "chromatic" notes to give it that bluesy sound; the Pentatonic skeleton is emphasized while the "chromatic" notes are tossed in occasionally for coloration. Basically, any note is fair game in The Blues style, but you must always return to the underlying Pentatonic Scale for the solo to sound in Key. To add expression to the lead, The Blues style tends to use lots of string-bending, vibrato, sliding, and Double-Stops. Also, you will notice that often a Blues lead will mimic the human voice, the guitar literally sings; BB King often sings along in unison while he is playing, his voice and the guitar hitting the same notes at the same time. In this next graphic, the black notes form the Pentatonic skeleton while the red notes are the "chromatic" notes.

String-Bending & Vibrato
String-Bending, as the name implies, is just where you hit a note and then bend the string so that the original note is bent up to some higher tone. Generally speaking, if you bend a note up, you should bend it up to another note in the scale that you are playing, not just bend the note up to some random stopping point. The Blues style is a bit of an exception to this general rule; in the Blues style you will hear partial or fractonal bends for coloration; the point here is to be in control of what you are doing - if you do a partial bend, do it on purpose; if you bend up to a specific note, do that on purpose. Closely related to String-Bending is Vibrato. To add Vibrato, you hit a note and then rhythmically and steadily wiggle the string back-and-forth thereby modulating the original note. You can produce different sorts of Vibrato by changing the speed and distance that you wiggle the string.

A common String-Bending technique is to use the index, middle, & ring fingers together to bend a string up to a desired note, hold the note, then pick another note on the adjacent higher string using the pinky finger to fret the note. Using three fingers together like this to bend the string up gives you lots of power & control over the bend and just plain feels good.

Another cool String-Bending technique is to bend a note up and then finger-tap other notes higher up on the same string.

A cool technique used by some bands is to have two leads going at the same time and having the leads harmonize with each other. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Iron Maiden achieve this effect using two lead guitarists while Brian May of Queen achieves this effect by himself by using a digital delay box. Common relationships of the notes being played are for both guitars to play the same notes at the same time (ie, playing in unison), harmonizing by having one guitar playing notes an octave higher or lower than the other, and harmonizing by having the 1st note and 3rd note of a musical passage playing at the same time (or, to be more precise, assuming 4 beats per measure, having the notes of the 1st and 3rd beats of a measure playing at the same time). This creates interweaving counterpoint as the layered notes cross one another, as in this next video example: